Tag: Israel

Laith Fadel al-Khaladi and Mohammed al-Masri, both 17, were fatally shot during protests that broke out after an arson attack on a Palestinian family took the life of an 18-month-old child and left his parents and brother with severe burns.

As the Iran deal is debated, it’s important to keep in mind who’s responsible for the nuclear arms race in the Middle East; turns out a “useless liberal arts degree” has become a hot commodity in the tech world; meanwhile, a writer explores Donald Trump’s mob ties. These discoveries and more after the jump.

“The real question is: Why is the [Iran] deal being pursued?” the renowned linguist and political commentator asks in a discussion with Antonio Mora on Al-Jazeera America. “What exactly is the threat of Iran?”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu charged last week that Iran was the major sponsor of terrorism in the world and that it wants to take over the whole world. Here are some replies to Netanyahu’s silliness.

After more than a fortnight of intense negotiations in Vienna, representatives from the P5+1 multinational coalition who have been meeting with officials from Tehran to try to reach a deal with Iran over its nuclear program seemed close to reaching a conclusion Sunday.

So far, a massive WikiLeaks release of tens of thousands of confidential and top secret Saudi Arabian government documents has shown the country’s royalty racking up huge unpaid bills, government officials discussing how to undermine Iran and a strong dislike of Israel.

The United Nations’ decision—under pressure from the U.S. government—to remove Israel from its list of children’s rights violators should not blind us from the truth: Israeli forces killed hundreds of Palestinian children last summer, and its continued occupation of Palestine undermines children’s basic human rights.

Nasser was only 4 years old in June 1986 when Israel’s Civil Administration declared his village an archaeological site and expropriated it. He doesn’t remember being driven out of the cave in which he was born, but his 70-year-old mother, Um Jihad, recalls it vividly.

Stephane Richard, CEO of the French telecommunications company Orange, embroiled himself in an international incident Wednesday during a visit to Cairo, when he said his company would withdraw its logo from the Israeli market “tomorrow” if he could.

Shachar Berrin was sentenced to a week in prison on the charge of participating “in a political meeting, while in uniform, in the presence of the media.” The army’s history of punishing soldiers’ public statements suggests that what he said, “not just the public venue, is what upset someone influential.”

President Barack Obama gave an interview on Israeli television Tuesday in which he said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s position on rejecting a Palestinian state as long as he is in power is damaging Israel’s credibility.

Depriving people of the right to express moral outrage through boycotts—as Canada’s Harper government intends to do with critics of Israel—increases the probability that some will resort to violence as a means of political expression, writes Robert Fisk at The Independent.

For weeks, Israeli forces have shut a village of 6,000 people out from entering Jerusalem from the occupied West Bank; scientists find that when it comes to fighting bacteria that resist antibiotics, viruses may come in handy; meanwhile, one writer explains why Elizabeth Warren is right about the Trans-Pacific Partnership. These discoveries and more after the jump.

Far right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commemorated Israel’s “Jerusalem Day” with a speech in which he said, “Jerusalem was always the capital of the Jewish people only, and no other,” and warned that Muslim terrorism menaced it.

“The US national security state, which has the power to block any attempt” by President Obama to forge a new, friendlier relationship with Iran, “has fundamental long-term interests in the continuation of the policy of treating Iran as an enemy,” writes Gareth Porter at Al-Jazeera.

Despite the torrents of press coverage here about Israel and its relationship with the United States, the daily reality of half the people in a century-old conflict is essentially off the American radar screen.

Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday with regard to the Russian Federation’s decision to go ahead with the sale to Iran of S-300 anti-aircraft batteries.

The framework agreement reached last week between the UN “5 plus 1” group and Iran has won general approval internationally, except in Israel and among Benjamin Netanyahu’s Republican Party claque in Washington, where such was never expected.

In a talk aired on C-SPAN in March, the world-renowned linguist and political activist discusses his book of essays “Masters of Mankind: Essays and Lectures, 1969-2013” and answers questions about Israeli politics.

Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges, author and journalist Max Blumenthal and Israeli activist Ronnie Barkan discussed the state of Israeli society at an event sponsored by Princeton University’s Seminarians for Peace and Justice in the Holy Land.

There is a lot of talk about nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and the ways in which an Iranian bomb would provoke Saudi Arabia and others to acquire nuclear warheads of their own. But for decades, the primary impetus to a nuclear arms race in the region has been Israel.

Palestinian women and Christians and male secularists are at special risk in the Yarmouk refugee camp now that Islamic State has taken it over. But had they been living normally in their homes in what is now Israel, with their own state, they would not have been left vulnerable to this fate.

The members of 47SOUL came together to play traditional Arabic street music with an electronic twist and a warm message to their audience that they “don’t care where you’re from,” so long as you listen.